Newsweek: THE DAY THAT CHANGED AMERICA

Except for the place where they died, Bill Feehan and Mohamed Atta would seem to have had absolutely nothing in common. Feehan rescued people; Atta killed them. As a lifelong firefighter who rose to become first deputy commissioner of the New York City Fire Department, Feehan was directly or indirectly responsible for saving thousands of lives. As a suicidal terrorist who flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, Atta murdered thousands, including Bill Feehan, who was helping a woman at the base of the North Tower when the building collapsed on him. Any suggestion of moral equivalence between the two men is repugnant. And yet, it must be said, both believed in the rightness of their causes with absolute certainty. It might be more comforting to think that Atta was stark raving mad, but true madmen, who are usually dysfunctional, don’t work with Atta’s calm purpose. No one wants to think that even a seminormal human being–indeed, nearly a score of them–could do what the terrorists did on September 11. In a world of moral relativism, we prefer psychological explanations; no one wishes to stare directly into the face of evil.